A Reflection for III Advent St. Andrew’s Church, Nags Head, N.C. December 15, 2019 Thomas E. Wilson, Supply Clergy
Isaiah 35:1-10 Canticle 15 James 5:7-10 Matthew 11:2-11
Making
a Choice For Joy
This is the 3rd Sunday of Advent which means that we lit the third candle on the Advent Wreath, the Rose-colored candle, or the Gaudete (from the Latin for rejoice) candle, the candle for joy. So, the three candles that are lit are, the Candle for Hope, the Candle for Peace and now the Candle for Joy. The light of the candles are separate, but also cumulative and the light expended grows, and not only arithmetically but geometrically. In order to have joy; we must first have Hope and Peace. Next week will be the Candle for Love, the kind of love that Joseph had for Mary in the Gospel lesson for that day. On Christmas Eve, we will light the Christ Candle as an outward and visible sign that the Baby Jesus is the embodiment of our Hope, Peace, Joy and Love.
Hope pays attention to the present and listens to what God is saying to us. Hope allows us to look deeper into the present moment and how God is equipping us to move into the future of the Life with God on earth as it is in heaven. Hope is the gift of Creation. Peace pays attention to look for signs of redemption even in the middle of things not going the way we would wish. Therefore, the paying of deep attention to the present moment to see God’s involvement in creation, which is Hope, is combined with the Peace that passes all understanding, paying attention to signs of redemption, God’s redeeming of all things. This combination sets us up to decide for the Spirit of Joy. In essence, I see this whole process as Trinitarian: Creator of Hope, Redeemer of Peace and Sanctifier of Joy, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Each morning I begin my day with a prayer which I learned in Cursillo, years before I went to Seminary:
Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them
the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created. And You
shall renew the face of the earth. O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit,
did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we
may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations, Through Christ Our Lord,
Amen.
Without my heart being filled with joy, I, and I would guess many of you, run down a bit, start being resentful and ask, “What am I getting out of this?” Joy is a discipline, to be chosen each day. We begin to choose joy by giving thanks. Let me give you some examples.
Suppose you are in a relationship and you have settled into a rut of getting so busy that you just never get around to remembering the joy you once had together. You end up being strangers and you wonder if someone else can give you joy. Joy is a choice to slow down, to get out of the busyness, to rediscover the joy of listening to each other and sharing what is in your heart. At the beginning of the relationship you were both is a sales mode, covering up what you were afraid would be rejected. Now you can move from sales to Thanksgiving because, now this other person knows your shadows you wanted to disown, as well as your projections you have unfairly placed on each other. With honesty and with giving thanks for each other, flawed as you both are, you move into holy space. It is Holy Space because you can be accepted as you are, given a chance for the past to be forgiven and know that you can face the future together with each other, having each other’s back. Making a choice for joy
Frederick Buechner in his book Telling Secrets wrote about making a choice for joy:
I
have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same
secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are
telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of
our condition—that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else
is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also
fear more than anything else
One of my Professors in Social Work, Alan Keith-Lucas, kept telling us that any helping relationship has three qualities; Reality, Empathy and Support. He called it a Trinity as well. Reality means giving up fantasies and pretense, replacing them with rigorous honesty. For Keith this was like the first person of the Trinity, where God does not play “let’s pretend” with us but rather says “This is the way it is!” Empathy means an act of imagination of understanding what the other person is going through. You never will know exactly, because each person is different, but you care enough to try. Keith said that it was like the 2nd person of the Trinity who emptied himself out and entered fully into human life but did not sin. Support meant that that you would be an outward and visible sign of the presence of the 3rd person of the Trinity, being with them to help them find hope, peace and joy in their life. You can become real rather than play roles, empathy with each other rather than sympathy or pity and support, meaning it is their work to do, but you are there to help, making a choice for joy.
Let me give you another example. Suppose you live in a world in which people disagree a lot and you end up finding yourself getting angry with the people who disagree with you. That is the time you need to go back to the Prayer for the Holy Spirit and ask for renewal of the face of the earth between you. Life is too short for us to carry around anger. The writer of the Book of James says: “Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged.” Pray for strength to love the person with whom you have the disagreement, he or she is your enemy. Pray for the wisdom to see them as a fellow child of God, who God loves and forgives just as God loves and forgives you. Be thankful for the similarity and pray for them to have Hope and Peace and for the strength to find joy. Choose to find joy in them by making yourself vulnerable to them instead of being on the defense or attack. Let them know your secret self so they know you as something more than an enemy, making a choice for joy
Making a Choice For Joy
Joy is not something which is caused,
rather it’s a choice made long before
we were able to open that new door,
leading to moment when we paused.
Then we say, “Yes, this indeed will do!
It’s a good excuse to exclaim and smile
in our hearts, for it does fit that profile
prepared which hope and peace led to.”
The circumstances don’t really matter.
It can be a real bad time in our journey,
when the winds run against us, stormy;
yet, joy moments allow fears to shatter,
when we hold times of kindness or awe,
in thanksgiving for acts of grace
we saw.
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